The End for the Last Time
by babybluecas
Summary: In the end, Dean kills God. But his action brings unfathomable consequence that forces him to make a sacrifice he could never expect.


Dean's fist's wrapped around the handle. The blade's plunged right into the heart. The smug, smug smirk falls off God's face; turns to disbelief, turns to horror.

"Amen, bitch."

Dean twists the blade for good measure, until the weight of God's body hangs on it, solely. Until the hatred and life fade out of his eyes.

There are no fireworks, no flash of blinding light. When Dean yanks out the god-killing knife, God falls to the ground, lifeless; a dead and empty shell, as if nothing but a carcass of a mortal.

The only thing marking him as unearthly is the essence oozing from the hole in his chest, pooling by his side: liquid and vapor and light, all at once. Though bright and divine, the sight of it doesn't burn out Dean's eyeballs, doesn't drive him mad.

Dean gives the body a solid stir with his boot, just to make sure. Chuck's head flops to the side.

"That was a little anticlimactic." Wary to take his eyes off the body, he turns to Cas. "Think it's a trick?"

It wouldn't be the first time. If all it takes is being an archangel—hell, a witch—to fake death or come back from it, if even Cas and Dean themselves came back to life so many times (though not by their own bidding), how long 'til Dean can be completely sure God's not gonna pop right back up?

How long 'til Dean can finally breathe?

"He's dead," Cas assures, though he's not gracing his dead maker with even a glance, his stare fixed on the ground. "His absence...I can feel it, it's—"

Cas's words get stuck in his throat as tears begin to stream down his face.

"Cas! Hey, Cas!" Dropping the blade, Dean rushes to Cas's side, cradles his face in his palms, thumbs wiping off tears but more huge drops follow. "What is it?"

He looks so miserable, glistening cheeks, quivering lips, red creeping around his eyes that avoid Dean's gaze, too.

"It feels so wrong," Cas says, at last.

All Dean can do is pull him in, wraps his arms around him and hold him, as his tears soak into Dean's shirt. "It's okay, it's gonna be okay."

"I know," he mutters into Dean's collar. "I'll have to get used to this ache."

Dean presses a kiss into Cas's hair before they pull apart. Causing Cas pain was the last thing he wanted, but it had to be done. God gone ballistic would have killed them all, eventually. Has killed too many already. Everyone the two of them loved. Killed Sam—

Dean's gonna have to get used to this ache, too.

Cas takes a long, deep breath. He manages a smile as he says, "You did it, Dean. You saved the world."

"Yeah." With an arm thrown across Cas's shoulder, Dean looks up to the sky. "Look, Sammy. We did it."

They won, though it seemed hopeless to go against God himself. Victory against all odds. Now, they'll finally get to—

A scream tears out of Cas's throat as he bends in half, head in his hands.

"Cas? Cas! What's going on?"

Instead of an answer, Cas lets out heavy grunts, as the tears return to his eyes.

"Cas, come on, tell me!" Dean begs, trying to hold him ups, as he falls through his hands. "Cas!"

How could Dean hope? Let his guard down? His eyes snap to Chuck, but the dead God still lies where he left him. Still dead.

"Dean"—Cas's fingers bite into Dean's forearm—"they're dying. They're all dying!"

A cold shiver runs through Dean's body. "Who's dying?"

Is it the angels dying along with their maker? Is the hole left by his absence devouring them?

Is Cas dying with them? No, no, he can't. Dean can't lose him too, not now, when everything was supposed to be fine, at last.

For a second, Cas's misty eyes pierce right into Dean's. No, it's not the angels. Not just them.

"_Everyone,_" Cas says and drops to the ground in agony.

"Everyone," Dean echoes as the air escapes his lungs. "People?"

Seven billion people—it cannot be true. Cas has to have it all wrong. They were supposed to be saving the world. They couldn't have been the ones to bring its end.

"Every soul," Cas wheezes, "every bird, every cockroach. I can feel them…their fear…pain."

With his heartbeat pounding in his head, Dean can hardly make out Cas's words; he can barely make up his own with his trembling jaw.

"What do I do? Cas! We have to fix this, how do we fix this?"

A thundering crack cuts through the air as the ground splits in the distance, right through the stone stairway, through the creek. An earthquake follows. They're running out of time.

"No universe can exist without God."

"I don't accept it. There must be something. Someone—"

It's a desperate thought, but if there was ever time for desperation, it's now.

On his knees, Dean lifts his face to the sky.

"Amara! Amara! Where the hell are you?" he shouts as loud as his lungs let him. They've tried, of course they did. You make deals with the devil when you must. But she never came. Why would she now? "Come on, we need your help! Please! I'll do anything."

"Dean," Cas croaks, his eyes, for the first time, glancing towards the body, only for a fraction of a second before his head snaps away, eyelids shut tightly.

Dean turns around in hopes of finding Amara standing there, even of Chuck resurrected and back on his feet. But there's only his corpse, the essence still glowing, alive, writhing on his chest and around him.

"What?"

Cas's fingers curls around Dean's wrist as he props himself to look up at Dean, his eyes boring into Dean's, four red trails of bloody tears trickling from the corners.

And before Cas says a word, Dean understands.

It was never Chuck's body that Cas's gaze strayed from. It was the essence; God's raw, living power that, with a mere glance, damaged the eyes of an angel of the Lord.

But not Dean's.

"No." Dean understands everything but he can't begin to comprehend it.

"You have to do this," Cas says through his teeth.

The thing must have messed with Cas's head too, because he can't be serious.

"No! You can't ask this of me, Cas!"

Dean's the man who gave up his soul for eternal damnation, who without hesitation shook Cain's hand and took on the Mark. The man who offered his body to an archangel and who was ready to sink into the bottom of the ocean in a fucking box.

But this? This is too much.

"I can't do this, Cas. I can't!"

But he has to. Of course he does. There's no one else within miles. There's _nothing_ else within miles. The ground around them all crumbled away. Even if there's another chosen one out there, there's no time or way to go fetch them.

"Alright," Dean says, resigned. He gives Cas's shaking hand a squeeze and stands up. He's gotta do it, even if it's just to ease Cas's pain. "I'll make it all better."

He turns away from Cas, curled on the ground, and towards his new destiny.

He takes a few steps before falling back to his knees, right at Chuck's feet. The swirling essence doesn't even look all that mighty.

"This is bullshit," he says, under his breath.

"I know you didn't ask for this," Cas says, his voice barely there, among the rattling coming from his lungs.

"Ya think?

Of course he didn't ask for this. Killing God, that was the deal. Kill God or die trying. Dean's not that picky.

Save the world from the God-proclaimed ending. Except Chuck lied—that wasn't the end.

This is it. Completely, truly the end.

So there Dean goes, saving it.

Or dying. 'Cause there's no way he can survive it. There's no way he, of all people, can take in God's power and put the world back together. He's not a superhero. He's not a saint.

"Why me?" he asks, staring at his new shiny companion, trying to find the courage in himself to reach out to it. "Why would it work for _me_, Cas? 'Cause I killed him? 'Cause I'm Michael's vessel or some shit, huh?" Cas doesn't answer. "Don't tell me it's 'cause I'm worthy because this isn't a fucking hammer, it's—"

It's silence. There's no sound bar for the rumbling of the ground beneath him. There are no birds chirping in the trees.

There are no agonized grunts and moans coming from Cas.

Dean's head snaps back to Cas, no longer lying on the ground, but crawling up to all fours. There's more blood on his face, on his hands, on his coat. But there's no more of someone else's pain.

"It must work," Cas says dully, head hung low. "Because you're the only one left."

Before his words get to sink in, Cas goes into a fit of choking cough and on the ground, on the spatter of blood, plops something thick and glowing. Dean recognizes it right away, though he shouldn't, now this disintegrated. His grace. Cas is dying too.

"No, Cas," Dean whimpers, but he doesn't move from his place.

He doesn't move when more grace pours out of Cas, through his eyes, his nose, the holes rotting out in Cas's skin. He doesn't move when Cas's arms and legs break beneath him like dry twigs, when his body crumbles and the bony shadows of his wings burn into the ground with Cas's last breath.

"It's okay, baby." Dean holds back a sob. "Just close your eyes now."

He turns back to the essence, reaches out, unafraid. He's got nothing to be afraid of anymore.

When his fingers get near, the essence reaches right back to him, like a touch-starved puppy. As if it already knew him. As if it had already claimed him as its own.

They touch.

It's a lightning strike. From his fingers, throughout his whole body, whole soul. It shatters him into pieces, an implosion. For a moment he thinks—no, he hopes—that the pure power annihilated him and that he'll now get to die just like every single person on the planet. Just like Sammy. Like Mom and Charlie and Kevin and Crowley and Jo and Bobby and Dad and every friend they buried along the way—the way to fucking free will that led them to this—that led them to the end.

Or to a new beginning.

Because the next moment he knows he's not falling apart. His body's still whole. God's essence crawls up his hand, his right hand, the hand that wielded guns and knives and the first blade, one that once was marked by the mark of Cain, one he's killed and killed and killed with.

And then it climbs on his shoulder, his chest, his neck. It climbs to his lips and, like a demon, it forces its way into his mouth, down his throat, like magma, burning his insides, sticking to his soul, his broken soul, damned soul, marked soul, remade soul, cured soul…

A scream tears out of his throat, shredding his cords, and there's nothing but light, white light that comes out of his mouth, out of his eyes, out of skin. It stretches endlessly, out miles, tens, hundreds, thousands of miles, covering the remains of earth, every sharp edge, every collapsed building.

Every echo of every soul that's yet to resound its one last torment before truly disappearing into nothingness deeper than the Void.

It stretches to the cold space outside, to other grounds, other empty planets, to the burning, dying sun—

"Focus, Dean," a voice comes.

Cas? Could it be?

As ordered, Dean focuses. He focuses on the fallen shape behind him, on the looming afterthought rising tall. Still, an anklebiter to Dean's endless vastness, to his all-permeating touch.

No. He must stay here, in this body, in this mind. There's no one else beside him. Nothing else but him and the godliness.

Before he lets it soar, he needs to possess the power as it possesses him. He's got enough will. He's got enough strength.

He pulls and pulls, every string and every wave and every lively, rabid part of the power, and he pushes and pushes it down.

He forces it into the bounds of his skin.

He binds the power to his fingertips. Those that pull the triggers, those that apply stitches, those that caress. He binds it to his mouth that recites exorcisms and whispers pet names in the night and blasphemes.

He binds it to the aching wounds of his mind, heart and soul that have known only loss and heartache and love lately, though once they'd been bursting with so much more.

It twines itself into each fiber of him, filling the vacant spaces, enveloping his blood cells. Like a balloon, around each particle of his being, it swells and it swells.

He binds it but it still grows wider, slipping from his grasp, reaching to the core of the earth, to the heart of the galaxy. Reaching to the neighboring universes, as dead and empty as this one, on the verge of the collapse.

No. No, they're all gone. On every celestial body, in every iteration of the universe. He's the only one left existing.

It can't be all on him. He can't do this, he can't bring them all back. Cas was wrong.

Cas was wrong and the power of God will annihilate him, in the end. It's a ticking bomb, the big bang two-point-oh in the making, right inside him. And if he's only got fractions of seconds 'til—

"Fix it," he commands. He wraps his whole being around this one idea. "Fix everything, bring them all back, put it all back together. Fix it. This isn't the end, this isn't the end, this isn't the end—" he keeps repeating the words like a mantra.

He breaks every bond. He releases the power and it floats and it floats. To every echo of every soul, to every cried-out cry and every prayed-out prayer. To every imprint of an imprint of seven billion people on this earth, to trillions gone from Heaven, from Purgatory, from Hell. Then further, to the infinity of the lost in every single universe.

Every single echo is a friend standing in the arms reach. Every single one is a scream inside his head. The chaos, the confusion, the agony. And in the very center, Dean's being stretched to the very brim.

"Dean," comes louder than any scream. "You can do this."

Everything stops, all the voice quiet. Only one presence remains, right behind Dean.

"Make it all better."

And Dean does.

_Fix it._

With a single thought, souls and bodies become whole.

With a single thought, the grounds cease their shaking, the waters raise into their pools.

The buildings, the trees, the birds in the sky.

Every realm—whole as if they never crumbled.

Everything's back as it was just minutes ago, when Chuck still stood at his altar, smug smirk twisting his face.

And Dean still stands there, in the center of his work. And he's still whole, too. The power stretched out, past the bounds of his skin; the extension of him.

"I knew you could do this."

"It wasn't even that hard," Dean says, turning to Cas. "I think it wanted to fix things all along."

The limbs of Cas's vessel are unbroken, his skin whole, blood gone from his face and clothes. The bony remnants of Cas's wings spread wide above his halo.

He's alive. Cas is alive.

But there's a wariness to his moves as he steps closer to Dean. An uncertainty.

Dean can't blame him. The moment God's essence touched him, it changed him. It remade him into something he's yet to define. But one thing he's sure of.

"It's still me, Cas," Dean says, spreading his arms wide, soft smile on his lips. "Come on." More cockily, he adds, "I'm just a little more badass now."

That's enough for Cas, who throws himself into Dean's embrace. A quiet, muffled sobs come out of his mouth, but this time, there's no pain in them, only happiness and relief, too overwhelming to hold back.

"I'm sorry, Dean," Cas says, as he pulls away, still remaining in Dean's hold. "I know you didn't want this—"

Dean shakes his head, surprised at Cas's words. "It's not your fault. There was no other way. Besides," he adds, brushing his fingertips across the muscles of Cas's back, "I think it's got its perks."

Cas's eyes grow wide as the new tissue spreads across the bones of his wings. A celestial equivalent of muscle and veins and nerves and skin, perfectly woven. Out of them grows a beautiful, full bouquet of feathers in more colors than an angel could imagine existing.

All ready to take off and fly.

"Dean!" Cas says with a mixture of disapproval and excitement. He folds the wings and spreads them a few times to test them out, to feel them. "You can't just—"

"You're welcome," Dean cuts him off, admiring his own work. "Listen, Cas. I'm pretty sure the next few…a long time might be a bit of a shit show as I learn the ropes and, uh, ethics, but—" Dean pauses, his palm cupping Cas's chin. He wants to make sure Cas hears him loud and clear. "I can promise you that from now on, we're gonna be just fine."

Cas nods, never taking his eyes off Dean. "I know we will."

Dean leans to land a gentle kiss on Cas's lips before breaking away. "And now, let's get out of here, we got a lot of work to do."

"I could fly us out of here," Cas offers as they begin to walk.

"No, thank you!" Dean mutters. "I think I could just…make us a car. A Range Rover or something…And a burger."


End file.
